They moved into a bigger house, and
got two more hired girls and a man, besides Mary. Mr. Whitermore said he
didn't want his wife to work so hard now, and that, besides, his
position demanded it. He was always talkin' about his position those
days, tryin' to get his wife to go callin' and go to parties and take
her place as his wife, as he put it.
"And Mary said Betty did try, and try hard. Of course she had nice clo's
now, lots of 'em; but somehow they never seemed to look just right. And
when she did go to parties, she never knew what to talk about, she told
Mary. She didn't know a thing about the books and pictures and the plays
and quantities of other things that everybody else seemed to know about;
and so she just had to sit still and say nothin'.
"Mary said she could see it plagued her and she wa'n't surprised when,
after a time, Betty begun to have headaches and be sick party nights,
and beg Mr. Whitermore to go alone--and then cry because he did go
alone. You see, she'd got it into her head then that her husband was
ashamed of her."
"And was--he?" demanded I.
"I don't know. Mary said she couldn't tell exactly. He seemed worried,
sometimes, and quite put out at the way his wife acted about goin' to
places.
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